Emerging Scholars Program - Week 13

A Challenge From Last Time:

A group of people live on an island. They are all perfect logicians. No one knows the color of their eyes. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. If anyone has figured out the color of their own eyes, they [must] leave the island that midnight. On this island live 100 blue-eyed people, 100 brown-eyed people, and the Guru. The Guru has green eyes, and does not know her own eye color either. Everyone on the island knows the rules (but are not given the total numbers) and is constantly aware of everyone else's eye color. Everyone keeps a constant count of the total number they see of each (excluding themselves). However, they cannot otherwise communicate. So any given blue-eyed person can see 100 people with brown eyes and 99 people with blue eyes, but that does not tell them their own eye color; it could be 101 brown and 99 blue. Or 100 brown, 99 blue, and the one could have red eyes.

The Guru speaks only once (let's say at noon), on one day in all their endless years on the island. Standing before the islanders, she says the following:

"I can see someone with blue eyes."

Who leaves the island, and on what night?

Parallel Computing

Parallel computing is the simultaneous execution of the same task (split up and specially adapted) on multiple processors in order to obtain results faster. The idea is based on the fact that the process of solving a problem usually can be divided into smaller tasks, which may be carried out simultaneously with some coordination.     - Wikipedia

Group activity I ~ 10 minutes

Ever wished you had 4 arms or maybe 4 eyes so you could watch TV and play a computer game at the same time? Assume you can (at your wish) split into 4 people in order to accomplish some kind of task(s). Think of 7 activities for which it would be useful to have this kind of ability. Present to the class.

Minor comment by me

Group activity II ~ 10 minutes

Think of 7 things you can't do better/faster if you had the splitting-into-four-people ability. Are any of the things you mentioned previously not possible? Present to class.

Some computers have A LOT of processors

A Challenge For Next Time: